


the skin from your shoulder to your ear makes it all worth it

by earlgreytea68



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Brief Mention of Suicide, M/M, warped 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:00:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26654800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlgreytea68/pseuds/earlgreytea68
Summary: Patrick's supposed to be loving Warped Tour 2005, but you know what? It's more like a summer of like.
Relationships: Patrick Stump/Pete Wentz
Comments: 50
Kudos: 144
Collections: Warped 2020





	the skin from your shoulder to your ear makes it all worth it

**Author's Note:**

> This is for the Warped 2020 Prompt Challenge. My prompt was "gay above the waist." 
> 
> Title is from [this blog post by Pete Wentz.](https://genius.com/Pete-wentz-the-summer-of-like-bang-the-doldrums-annotated)

“Sexuality is a spectrum,” Pete is explaining dramatically, expansively, to anyone who is listening at the after-party.

Patrick is too exhausted to sleep, wired from the concert, the signings, the fever pitch things are suddenly at. It’s too new to sleep through yet, like Christmas night when you’re still busy playing with all your presents. Like staying up late to record the first time he figured out he could layer sounds on his tape deck. It’s like that kind of feeling, exhilarating but also stomach-flopping. Patrick imagines this is what being pushed out of an airplane feels like.

So Patrick knows now how he’d react if he was pushed out of an airplane: He’d sing _Sugar, We’re Goin’ Down_ at the top of his lungs and then hold his breath for the crash, curl into a ball, unnoticed. He knows how Pete would react, too: He would talk all the fucking way down, apparently about the spectrum of sexuality.

The people around Pete are transfixed, like he’s saying something brilliant. Whatever, Patrick gets brilliant words out of Pete, but they’re not words like _sexuality is a spectrum_. There’s another show the next day, and Patrick’s too tired to sleep but he’s also too tired for the Pete Wentz Full Monologue Spectacular. He takes a bodyguard with him and creeps back to the bus. Joe and Andy are already there, playing Mario Kart.

“How was the party?” asks Joe.

“Uh-huh,” says Patrick, and falls into his bunk and waits for Pete.

Who comes in, reliably, just as the bus lumbers its way into wakefulness for their overnight trek to the next city. He’s bouncing off the walls, vibrating with energy as he crawls into Patrick’s bunk and crowds him in.

“You left early,” he says accusingly.

“Sexuality is a spectrum?” Patrick says pointedly.

Pete yawns. “It is,” he says, and lays his head down on Patrick’s chest. “It is. I’m totally gay for you. Gay above the waist.”

***

 _Gay above the waist_ is what Patrick thinks when he walks in on Pete and Mikey.

They’re not in a room, though, so he can’t really walk in on them. And they’re not really _doing_ anything, just sitting cross-legged in the grass facing each other, not touching at all. So it’s odd that Patrick should think anything at all about running into them, odd that Patrick should feel jealous, when he is the person Pete never sits near without sitting _on top of_. Like, Patrick shouldn’t feel like he’s intruding. No one ever feels like they’re intruding when they burst in on Pete and Patrick and Pete’s got his literal feet in Patrick’s literal lap.

So, like, whatever, Patrick’s being irrational by feeling shut out. But he feels…odd. Off. And he can’t help but think that what he’s feeling is the unusual feeling of being shut out by Pete Wentz. Patrick is _never_ shut out by Pete Wentz. Never, ever, ever, not since the moment of their meeting. Patrick has watched Pete slip behind doors with girls and never felt shut out. But now there’s something about the way Pete is pitched toward Mikey, watchful and rapt, like Mikey is saying or _being_ something incredible, and Patrick knows that look and doesn’t like it from an outside perspective.

He hesitates, caught, uncertain, unsure what to do. He feels like he should creep back toward the stage and the audience and the loudness of Warped Tour, because this patch of grass is taken.

And the thing is – the thing is – Pete looks up at him, smile lingering from whatever Mikey was doing or _being_ , and says, “Patrick, hi, what’s up? Did you need me for something?” Not _come sit with us_ , or _omg I missed you, where’ve you been?_ or _oh, look, my favorite person, I’ve been so bored, come entertain me_. Like, Pete just asks if Patrick needs him _for something_. And Patrick doesn’t know how to answer that. Like, outside of what had been, up until this point, an extremely codependent relationship of neediness? Like, Patrick assumed that needing each other for vague and nebulous reasons of just feeling _better_ when the other was close was the default state of their being.

Patrick says dully, his voice thick and his mouth dry, “No, no, I’m fine, I just… I’m fine.”

Pete smiles and says, “Cool,” and turns back to Mikey.

Mikey has picked up a dandelion and is picking out the little white fluff pieces one at a time. Who the fuck does that?

***

Mikey’s really beautiful. Like, Mikey’s not a dork hiding behind a trucker’s hat because he hates to have people looking at him. Mikey’s just out there, being _beautiful_. Everything about him is a perfect picture, pulled together for maximum impact, perfect hair and perfect mouth and he’s got cooler glasses than Patrick and way better hats. When Mikey and Pete are near each other – and they always seem to be near each other these days, when they’re not on stage performing with their respective bands, then Mikey and Pete are hanging out, all the time, napping on grassy lawns and painting each other’s fucking nails like life is one huge slumber party and they’re the fucking Babysitters’ Club girls or, like, whatever, Patrick’s sister was always reading those books and Mikey and Pete are like the fucking Babysitters’ Club only more stupidly beautiful and wrapped up in each other and convinced of the superfluousness of the rest of the world. Anyway. When Mikey and Pete are near each other, Patrick watches them, and they are a beautiful matched pair, perfect packages presented to the world.

They make sense together. Such incredibly perfect sense together.

Patrick looks at himself in mirrors – on buses, in chaotic backstage areas, in bathrooms at parties he doesn’t feel like attending but goes to because the rest of the band goes – and he looks at his hopeless hair and his embarrassing glasses and the way, no matter what he wears, he will never look as sleek and touchable as Mikey, he’s always going to look rumpled and dowdy. Patrick’s never really wanted to be the glamorous guy everyone looks at, he’s always been happy for Pete to take that role, but he guesses that, in his heart of hearts, he was mostly okay with that because the person everyone was looking at was busy looking at _him_. He’s lost that now. Pete is there with him on stage, the way he always was, but off-stage, Patrick feels like he’s navigating this tour mostly alone.

“You okay?” Joe asks him at one party. “You seem like you’re gradually running down.”

“Long tour,” Patrick replies. “Lots of shows.” He keeps his responses short because he doesn’t want to get into it.

“We don’t have to go to the parties, you know,” Joe offers.

“ _We_ don’t have to go,” Andy interjects, gesturing between himself and Patrick. “You and Pete are clearly having a blast.”

“Pete more than the rest of us,” says Joe.

Patrick doesn’t look at Pete, who he knows is off in a corner holding court with Mikey, curled close into each other like open and closed quotes. Patrick says, “Yeah, maybe I want to go home.”

And maybe Patrick actually means home but right now the best he can do is a bus. Andy goes back with him because he insists Patrick shouldn’t go alone.

“I’m not going to be much fun,” Patrick says. “I’m really tired.”

“It’s cool. You know you don’t have to entertain me? You don’t have to be ‘on’ all the time.”

Patrick kind of feels like he does, these days. When he’s not in front of an audience, he feels completely unprotected, with Pete spiraling away from him this way. He can’t afford not to be ‘on’ because if he’s not ‘on,’ he’ll be eaten by the wolves. That’s how he feels.

And maybe Andy is reading his thoughts because Andy says softly, “Not with your band. Right? You shouldn’t feel that way with your band.”

He shouldn’t. He doesn’t. It’s just that this tour isn’t just their band, and on one of the buses rumbling through the night, Mikey talks Pete through insomnia these days. Patrick hasn’t had so much uninterrupted sleep in years. He’s absolutely exhausted from it.

***

Most of the time, Pete goes to the My Chem bus, and Patrick appreciates this kindness. It’s not like Pete’s a cruel guy, honestly. He’s really the nicest guy Patrick’s ever met. Which is why it’s inexplicable to Patrick that Pete has Mikey join their bus one night, inexplicable that Pete lets Mikey crawl into his bunk and Patrick can hear them giggling, like, _all fucking night_ , and wow, that _is_ annoying, no wonder Andy and Joe usually yell when he and Pete do that.

Andy and Joe don’t yell now, Patrick notices, and he spends a night with his jaw tightly clenched, staring at the inside of his bunk and trying not to notice how enormous and lonely it feels.

In the morning, Patrick’s jaw is killing him and he’s worried about singing that night and Mikey is beautiful and put-together, while Patrick is sitting bleary-eyed, sleepless, in pain, and everything he’s wearing is dirty and stained and his hair has never done whatever artful cooperative tousle Mikey’s hair is doing in his entire life.

Patrick is so jealous he wants to cry, wants to strip himself out of his skin and crawl into Mikey’s instead, wants to punch Mikey’s fucking face.

Pete comes bounding out into the kitchen area of the bus, exclaiming, “Mikey, I totally figured out – Trick, you look like shit, what’s up with you?”

Joe appears briefly over Pete’s shoulder, looks alarmed, and scurries like a coward back into the bunk area.

Patrick clenches his jaw some more, which makes it hurt some more, and says nothing.

“It’s a long tour, dude,” Pete tells him, really looking at him for the first time in a long time, it feels like. “Are you taking care of yourself?”

 _No, that was your fucking job_ , Patrick doesn’t say. He glares at Mikey and sips his coffee.

“Ooookay,” Pete says when Patrick stays silent. Then he looks at Mikey. “He’s never awake before noon, don’t mind him. Come see what I was saying, I totally figured out how to connect those two cat’s cradle things.”

Patrick watches them go back into the bunk area, frowning at them.

“Look,” Joe says, sitting down next to Patrick. “I don’t think they’re actually _doing_ anything.”

“They’re playing cat’s cradle,” Patrick says.

Joe pauses. “Is that a…euphemism?”

“Why should I care if they’re doing anything?” Patrick replies, and sips his coffee stonily.

Joe looks at him. “Because—”

“I don’t care,” Patrick says. “I, like, absolutely do not care. It’s been nice, hasn’t it? It’s been _quiet_. We are relieved of Wentz duty. It’s like we’re on vacation. I’m going to take up a new hobby, like maybe knitting, or something. Because of how peaceful and quiet it is around here and how _rejuvenated_ I feel.”

“Yup,” says Joe, looking like he would like to crawl directly into his coffee cup and never come out. “Yup, yup. Exactly what I was going to say.”

***

There are a lot of pictures of Pete and Patrick. In most of them, Pete is touching Patrick. In most of them, Patrick is not touching back. Pete is just naturally touchier than Patrick, Patrick thinks. It’s nothing more than that. It doesn’t _mean_ anything.

Except that, in the pictures of Pete and Mikey, the touching is mutual. They’re always leaning in, arms around each other. Pete touches Mikey, and Mikey touches back. Pete never got that out of Patrick, and maybe that’s what Patrick did wrong. Maybe that’s how Pete ended up with Mikey instead. Like, Mikey is like the deluxe exclusive version of Patrick, with a couple of unreleased bonus songs tacked on at the end. He’s the sort of person Pete should be in a band with, not Patrick.

“Do you think that, like, bands are _meant_ to be together?” Patrick asks wistfully – and fucking hates how wistful he sounds, like, Patrick is _not_ wistful.

Josh, his bodyguard, says, “What?” Patrick wanted to go to Target. It’s stupid he had to take a bodyguard with him to wander up and down the aisles of Target aimlessly and let himself get lost in the vapidity of American consumerism, but Joe and Andy both insisted. Pete was already on the My Chem bus, so he wasn’t around to insist. 

“You know, like, I don’t know. Some people are meant to be in bands together.” Patrick picks up a decorative towel like he lives a life where he needs a decorative towel, puts it down.

“Like band soulmates?” asks Josh.

“Yeah, exactly,” says Patrick, nodding, earnest and relieved. “Like band soulmates. I knew you’d get it.”

“Man, I have no idea what you are talking about,” Josh tells him genially.

Patrick sighs, wanders along the aisles. “I thought you would! You’re always hanging out with bands!”

“I’m the bodyguard, man. I am not paid to think about their love lives.”

“I’m not talking about love lives. Not really. I’m talking about… If you looked at a lineup of people, I feel like you could pick out the ones that are supposed to be together. The ones that _fit_.” Patrick fingers the sleeve of a coat that looks like something Mikey would wear. “Pete and I don’t fit,” Patrick says, and he hates how sad he sounds about this. Maybe Josh doesn’t know him well enough to notice.

Josh shrugs and says, “Your band is doing pretty well.”

Patrick stares at the coat in front of him and thinks of how their bodyguard – _their bodyguard_ – the best he could do to defend the fit of Pete and Patrick together was a vague statement about their band. That’s how little Pete and Patrick have fit together this summer.

Patrick pulls the coat off the rack and says hastily, “I need to try this on,” and heads toward the fitting rooms.

“But it’s a coat!” Josh calls after him, confused.

Patrick locks himself in a fitting room and sternly tells himself not to cry.

He doesn’t vandalize the coat but honestly, it’s a near thing.

***

Patrick stands in front of wall-to-wall kids screaming Pete’s words along with him, and he knows – he _knows_ – he should be having the time of his life. He knows he’s having the kind of summer sixteen-year-old him could only have dreamed of. He knows that Josh is right and his band is doing pretty well and they would be the biggest attraction on Warped Tour if it weren’t for My Chem, and isn’t that just the fucking story of Patrick’s fucking life right now? He would also be the biggest attraction on Warped Tour to a certain Pete Wentz if it weren’t for fucking My Chem.

And after the set, sweaty and dehydrated in the backstage area, sucking down bottles of water, Patrick watches Pete, who is smoothly changing his shirt, tattoos on display, and he thinks to himself, _I am fucking miserable because I don’t care about the rest of this if I have to do it without Pete_.

It’s the first time he’s thought it with that amount of crystal clarity.

He thinks of almost losing Pete, of how that was only a few months ago, even though it seems like several lifetimes ago. He thinks of Pete sending them off to tour without him, looking small and lost and young in his hoodie, very fragile and breakable. Then Patrick thought, very clearly, how the most precious person in his life seemed so tenuous to him, the thread between them holding them together gossamer thin.

And then they finished that nightmarish European tour during which Patrick hated every second and fought the impulse to cry himself to sleep every night over how much he missed Pete, and Patrick had been looking forward to Warped Tour, Pete had seemed better, more solid and less see-through, less like he was drifting with one foot out of Patrick’s life. Pete seemed _here_ , when Warped Tour started, and Patrick had been looking forward to it.

Pete no longer seems here to Patrick. Which isn’t fair, because Patrick doesn’t think – not exactly – that Pete is in the dark place he had been in before. Patrick knows that particular dark place, knows his own failings and helplessness in trying to address it, knows it all intimately, and he doesn’t think Pete’s in it now. Pete seems absent now in a very different way, in a way that Patrick’s not sure he ever considered before: that Pete might be present in the world but no longer _Patrick’s_.

It is exceedingly selfish of Patrick, to be feeling like this at all, to be making Pete and everything Pete is all about Patrick, as if Pete’s desperation in the Best Buy parking lot is important only in what it meant to Patrick, as if Pete’s moods now are important only in what they mean to Patrick. Patrick is the worst friend in the entire history of time and no wonder Pete went and found himself a replacement.

Patrick tries to talk to Pete, but he doesn’t even know what he wants to say. _I miss you, and I’m so fucking selfish because I’m upset because I always thought I would be the person who would be able to make you happy, and I never did and I should be glad you found the person who did and instead I just miss you and can I have a do-over?_ This isn’t what Patrick says. He says, “How are you?” because, like, give him a fucking break, okay?

They’re getting ready to play, and Pete is bouncing off the wall with pre-show energy, feeding off the crowd they can hear beyond the stage. He grins at Patrick and says, “I am ready to give these kids a fucking _show_ , am I right?” like Patrick asked the question as some kind of weird pep talk or whatever.

Patrick sighs, “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” like, he doesn’t care right now.

“Tricky, let me tell you something,” Pete says, crowding up into his space like it’s the old days all over again. “You’re going to get out on that stage and you’re going to sing and all those kids are going to sing _with_ you. They’re going to fucking sing back to you a song you gave them. What is not to love about that? What is not to love about this fucking summer?”

Patrick looks at Pete, at the joy and delight written so evidently on his face, and Patrick thinks how “love” isn’t the world he’d use for this summer.

Which must show on his face, because Pete actually _looks_ at him and says, in bewilderment, “What’s up with you? Isn’t this what you wanted? Don’t you love this?”

 _It turns out I wanted you, oops_ , Patrick thinks. _It turns out you’re what I love_. Patrick says, “No, no, I…I like it.”

“You _like_ it?” Pete repeats incredulously.

“Yeah, it’s a total…total summer of like,” Patrick says.

“Summer of _like_?” Pete echoes.

And then Joe comes over and says, “Yo, are we ready to do this!”

And then they have a show, and after the show, Pete retreats to the My Chem bus and Patrick tries not to feel too bad for himself.

***

When they sign for the kids, it’s a day of Pete right by his side, just like he used to be, and Patrick unfurls in the heat of his attention, like a flower in a greenhouse. It’s pathetic, how obviously he must come alive by Pete’s genial presence next to him, by Pete’s jokey asides just for his ears, by the way Pete leans too far into his personal space, grins as he signs over and across Patrick’s signature. Patrick could make a list of the things about Warped Tour he’s actually loving this summer, and he loves when Pete still slinks close to him on stage, and he loves these signing moments, Pete right there, like old times.

Patrick almost says it then, when they’ve finally seen the last kid through and there’s a little break until performance time, he almost says, _I miss you, let’s watch a movie together_ , like, fucking _anything_.

And then there is Mikey, all up in their space, immaculately effortless in his cool _belonging_.

“Yo,” he drawls laconically to Pete.

“Yo,” Pete replies, grinning, in the same kind of ironic detachment tone, like, this is their own little language of snide superiority that Patrick could never hope to speak.

So Patrick says, “Hi,” even though he’s superfluous in this arrangement and everyone can see that. “How’s it going?”

“It’s cool,” Mikey replies.

“See you, Tricky,” Pete says, and presses a kiss to Patrick’s cheek and taps the brim of his hat and winks at him.

And then he goes off with Mikey, handsy as usual.

Joe remarks, “How well do you know Mikey?”

“I don’t,” Patrick says, and forces himself to stop watching them. “At all.” He braces himself, because he might have a tantrum if Joe tells him to _get to know him_ or _you’d like him_ or whatever.

“Because,” Joe continues, with exaggerated casualness, “he is a lot like Pete.”

Patrick blinks. That’s not…where he expected Joe to go with this. He looks at Joe. “He’s what?”

Joe shrugs. “They’re a lot alike.”

“Because they both play bass?” Patrick doesn’t know what else to make of this.

Somebody comes over to urge them to move more quickly so that they can make way for the next signing.

***

On the bus, Patrick can’t sleep, which isn’t unusual anymore. He sits up and watches _The Goonies_ by himself while they race through the night. It’s a gentle, rocking cocoon, with the blue light of the television glowing at him, and Patrick thinks how Pete preferred insomnia nights on buses to insomnia nights in hotels, found them more soothing.

Andy wanders out and looks at him.

“Sorry,” Patrick says, “did I wake you?”

“No,” Andy says, and then sits next to him. “I’ll join you.”

Patrick feels like everyone is coddling him. Is he this fucking difficult to be in a band with? Jesus Christ, he really is the worst person. He says, “You don’t have to.”

Andy shrugs. “I want to.”

They watch the movie for a few minutes and then Patrick blurts out, because he’s smooth, “Do you know Mikey?”

Andy looks at him evenly, like this question doesn’t surprise him at all, which it probably doesn’t, because Patrick is so transparent. “A little.”

“I don’t, like, I don’t want to make this about _me_ ,” Patrick says, as a preamble for how he’s going to make this all about him. “But I thought Pete and I were friends—”

“That word doesn’t cover it,” Andy interrupts him.

“Yeah, like, _whatever_ ,” Patrick says, because in this new world of Warped Tour and Mikey all of the times Pete dramatically stumbled over the impossibility of accurately conveying his connection to Patrick seem so fucking _performative_ , “I’m sure Mikey’s a cool guy or whatever, but Pete didn’t even say bye. Like, to me. He just… He just walked away one day and I didn’t even notice it was happening. I feel like he’s always trying to leave me and I’m so much a loser that I don’t just let him go, or something, I don’t know.” Fuck, did he literally just make Pete’s _suicide attempt_ about him. He’s the _worst_.

“This isn’t about you, you know,” Andy says.

Patrick covers his face with his hands. “I _know_. I really am the fucking worst, _sorry_ —”

“No, I mean, you’re his Patrick, you’re always going to be, you’re something entirely different.”

“That’s not true,” Patrick says miserably. “Mikey’s like the better version of me.”

“The better version of _you_?”

“He has better hats and better hair and better glasses.” Patrick’s litany is one of pain.

“Patrick, Mikey has way more in common with Pete than with you.”

Patrick looks at Andy, confused. “That’s what Joe said, too.”

“Because we are wise, because we are not in the middle of the kind of intense relationship that makes it difficult to think straight. He doesn’t love everyone the way he loves you. There’s only you for that.”

“Me and Mikey.”

Andy shakes his head. “You. This thing with Mikey isn’t about you. Pete still loves you the most.”

“Then what’s this thing with Mikey?” Patrick thinks most of the evidence shows Andy’s wrong in this theory. He definitely does not feel like Pete still loves him the most.

“It’s not about you,” Andy says gently. “Not all things are.”

***

Patrick begins to realize, gradually, over the course of the next few shows that, well, maybe he’s _letting_ Pete spin away from him. Like, he’s been so obsessed with the idea that there was nothing he could do to stop what was happening that maybe he didn’t actually try to stop what was happening. The way Joe and Andy talk about everything that’s going on, they don’t seem to think Mikey is a replacement-Patrick. And, if Patrick pays attention, maybe he’s been trying so hard to be so understanding of Pete’s relationship with Mikey that maybe, well, _maybe_ Pete might think that Patrick’s stopped caring. And Patrick’s disengaged responses to Pete recently might be contributing to that.

Maybe.

Like, maybe when Patrick was worried he was losing his best friend, maybe Pete was worried he was losing _his_. Maybe, maybe the Pete who’d felt so alone in a Best Buy parking lot a few months earlier is still a Pete who might really need his best friend but might not be the best at reaching out for him, and maybe Patrick’s a really shitty best friend to not have realized that none of this was about _him_ , it was about _Pete_ needing him to reach out and grab and keep in the way that Pete had once done to Patrick. 

After the show, when Pete is ready for the My Chem bus, Patrick does it, takes the leap, reaches for him. It’s as simple as saying, softly, “Pete.”

And Pete turns toward him, the way Pete has always turned toward him. Yeah, maybe, after all, all he had to do was ask. Maybe Pete was waiting desperately for Patrick to ask.

“So,” says Patrick awkwardly. He hadn’t thought this far, as if he’d half-expected Pete to blow him off. So he says, accidentally, what he means to say. “I miss you.”

Pete blinks, and, somehow, softens? That’s the best way Patrick can think to describe it. “Do you?” he asks, hesitantly, like he can’t believe that.

“Yeah,” Patrick says immediately, because he can’t believe Pete would doubt that. “Can you maybe, I don’t know, stay on our bus tonight and, like, I don’t know.”

It’s not the most eloquent invitation but Pete treats it like it is, bounding over to him, pressing his nose into Patrick’s neck. “Yeah,” he mumbles. “Totally.”

***

They don’t talk for the whole movie. Pete cuddles close to Patrick and Patrick…cuddles him back. Like, he doesn’t just let himself be cuddled. He’s active in the cuddling. He lets Pete burrow into him and he burrows right back. He can’t believe how much he’s missed this and he can’t believe he was just letting it _go_.

When the credits are rolling, Pete takes a deep breath, and Patrick waits. Patrick presses his face into the shelter of Pete’s hoodie and waits.

“I think I’m…” Pete says. “What I mean is… I don’t want to be…too much. I’m always too much.”

“You’re not too much,” Patrick says. “You’ve never been too much.”

“I’ve always been too much and I keep dragging you down with me,” Pete replies, sounding anguished. “I don’t want to do that anymore.”

Patrick lifts his head to look at him. “You never do that. You pick me up.” That sounds so cheesy, Patrick can’t believe he said it. But it’s true.

Pete’s throat works, like there are words caught there that he can’t get out, like there are tears caught there that he can’t get out. “I’m just, like… I want you to love all this, Trick. I thought you were going to love all of this. I really wanted you to have it and love it.”

“Pete.” Patrick swallows thickly. He’s taken so many leaps tonight, he can take this one, too. “What I love is _you_. I want to have all this with _you_.” 

Pete makes a sound like a sob and then latches onto Patrick, grabbing desperately, and suddenly Patrick realizes how right Andy was: He’s Pete’s Patrick. There’s nothing else that could possibly happen that would ever change that.

Patrick holds his bundle of Pete and kisses his messy emo hair and says tenderly, “Come to bed.”

It’s the first time in a while that they’ve shared a bed, and it’s glorious.

Pete says, “You’re smiling,” as they curl up together.

Patrick decides not to deny it this time. “Maybe a little.”

The next day Pete writes on his blog, _Sometimes when you’re feeling this blue the right smile can save you._

***

Looking through Pete’s most recent blog entries, Patrick realizes that he’d been freaking out over so many of them, assuming all of these words Pete was spinning were about Mikey. But Patrick reads them now and thinks…not so much. Sure, some of them are, definitely, Pete always scatters thoughts at will, waiting for Patrick to pick up the pieces and it’s inevitable there would be some thoughts about Mikey this summer. But some of these lines, now that Patrick really looks at them, some of them are definitely for Patrick. The way some of the lines have always been for Patrick.

_the takeoffs are the worst but the skin from your shoulder to your ear makes it all worth it._

And Patrick thinks of Pete nestled there, hiding from all of his fears, as if Patrick can keep the plane from crashing.

_sneaking in your window instead of out._

And Patrick thinks of the way Pete used to do that, when they were still kids and he was theoretically supposed to be in high school, supposed to have a curfew, supposed to do things like study and sleep the night before a test, and Pete would sneak in, and never sneak out because Patrick would leave him dead to the world in the morning in the middle of his bed and Pete would leave the empty house later, when he woke up, after everyone was at work, walking right out the front door.

_the way you always were my best excuse for calling in sick on everyone else._

And Patrick thinks of how often Pete has done that for him, blew off plans to hang with Patrick, sat on the bathroom floor with him in the middle of raging parties, never thought twice about it.

_i miss you._

And Patrick wishes he’d realized that Pete felt the distance between them and thought that he’d caused it but also that Patrick wanted it.

_and im sorry the way my moods flicker on and off like old light on your porch, but i know you wouldn’t have it any other way._

Did Pete know that, though? Did he? Patrick was hesitant, no longer sure. He needed to be clearer with him. It was okay with Patrick, if Pete had a hard time settling, staying still. Patrick loved him for that, for everything. Did Pete know?

_bestfriends, exfriends- better off as lovers not the other way around._

Patrick reads this thoughtfully. Thinks of best friends, thinks of thinking that he was losing his best friend, thinks of lovers.

_the way the waists of pants feel better at the ankles._

Thinks of _gay above the waist_.

***

The thing about Pete is he’s all about words. He struggles over the labels he should have -- _they_ should have -- because he thinks in words.

Patrick doesn’t think in words. He doesn’t spend time trying to describe what Pete means to him. He doesn’t think of himself as gay, either above or below the waist. He thinks of the way Pete is sometimes the crashing of a symphony, an impossible number of cacophonous instruments all at once, a barreling and undeniable wall of sound, horns blasting, percussion booming. He thinks of the way Pete is sometimes a slow and sinuous rising violin line, with the softness of a woodwind creeping in its path, charming and compelling, drawing you in to listen closer and grin at a discovered moment. He thinks of the way Pete is sometimes a hesitant melody, plucked on the strings of a harp, at points scattered, at points ostinato, but somehow always coalescing into something of heartbreaking beauty. When he thinks of Pete, that’s what he thinks of. And he holds those sounds close to him. Those are songs he never writes, because those are Pete, in his head. And what is the label for that? There is none. That bothers him so much less than that bothers Pete.

Pete pays attention to the narrative, to the stories people tell, about them, about him. Pete is always trying to control the narrative. It’s what exhausts Pete, ultimately. So there’s a narrative now, a rock star narrative. And there’s another narrative, the Mikey Way narrative. And both of those narratives, Patrick knows, those are the puffery, the protective insulation installed around the true narrative, and that true narrative is where Pete Wentz lives, scared and uncertain, waiting for someone to knock, and the fact that Patrick forgot that Pete needs him in there with him, that Pete otherwise is lost and alone in that inner layer, is inexcusable to Patrick.

There’s an afterparty, when the set is over, because there’s always an afterparty. A brief flurry of drinks and make-out sessions somewhere, and usually they go, but tonight Patrick hangs back, grabbing Pete’s little finger with his little finger, not really a holding of hands, not much of anything if Pete wasn’t attuned to him, didn’t turn back immediately.

Patrick says, “Stay with me?”

And Pete doesn’t ask _why_ or _for what_. Pete says, “Okay.”

Patrick’s sure that probably a bodyguard hangs back with them. There’s always a bodyguard attached to Pete these days. Usually Pete can’t go anywhere without being inundated. But now the festival grounds have emptied out, the stages being struck down, and Patrick leads Pete back to trampled grass, far away from the stage, away from the floodlights of the cleaning crews. Pete is silent, walking beside him.

Patrick stops and says, “Remember we used to do this?”

Pete lifts an eyebrow, just visible in the moonlight. “Did we?” He sounds confused.

“Okay, not _this_ ,” Patrick admits. “But, like, in the daylight. We did it in the daylight. We used to nap in the grass while the bands played, remember? Sleeping up until our set. And no one would bother us because no one knew who we were. Remember?”

“Do you miss that?” Pete asks, a thread of anxiety.

“No,” Patrick assures him softly. “It’s just… We haven’t done it this tour. Napped in the grass.”

“You want to nap in the grass?” Pete clarifies.

“Yes,” says Patrick.

“Okay.” Pete shrugs, gamely stretches out on the grass.

It’s cold and damp and downtrodden, but Patrick doesn’t care. They curl close to each other, and Patrick lets Pete study his face with his intent Pete-at-Patrick stare.

“I’m here,” Patrick says finally, because he thinks he’s realized that Pete needs to have it said. “I’m always here. Not because I have to be. Not because you’re an obligation. Not because you drag me down and keep me with you. I’m here because I’m your Patrick, the same way you’re my Pete, and I’m always going to be here, and so are you. You know how you run around being Pete Wentz for literally every single person we meet? I’m your Pete Wentz. Okay? That’s me. Your Pete Wentz.”

It sounds utterly ridiculous, and Patrick’s embarrassed and wishes he was better with words, but Pete just blinks at him and takes a shuddery breath and doesn’t say anything at all. His eyes are luminous in the moonlight. In the distance there’s the clank of metal, workers shouting to each other, but where they are it’s a dark cocoon flung over with stars and it’s just the two of them. Like the inner sanctum of Pete’s Russian nesting dolls of narrative. That’s where they exist right now.

Patrick takes a deep breath, and Patrick hums. It comes out like he hoped it would, so he grows more confident, into louder _la la la_ s. Pete listens, transfixed, and when Patrick’s done Pete breathes out, “What song is that?”

“Yours,” Patrick says. “One of them. You have a lot, in my head. But that’s one of them. It’s the one I hear when I look at you when we’re like this. That one. So maybe it’s…ours.”

Pete smiles at him. They breathe in the grass together.

Patrick says, “I don’t think in words like you. I don’t have a label to give this. All I have is a song.”

“It’s a beautiful song,” Pete says. “We don’t need a label.”

“I was hoping you would say that, because…” Patrick trails off.

“Because?”

Patrick gulps and then goes for it. Wasn’t that what this was all about? “Gay above the waist. It doesn’t work for me.”

“Huh? It doesn’t what?”

“It doesn’t work.” Patrick says. “I mean, I don’t think I’m gay at all, in the sense of the word as I always understood it, but, I don’t know, whatever I am, right now, with you, I definitely want to be above _and_ below, like, all parts of my body should be involved.”

Pete’s gaze is impassive for a long moment and Patrick almost squirms and then he says, “Patrick. That’s the sexiest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

“Oh, God,” Patrick says, and does squirm. “Shut _up_.”

“Can I kiss you now?”

Patrick’s the one who shuts up.

“I have wanted to kiss you for one thousand, one hundred and ninety-seven days,” continues Pete.

“No, you haven’t,” croaks Patrick.

“Give or take a few,” Pete allows, and then just looks at him with those shining eyes.

Patrick’s breaths are short and sharp, struggling for air in this fairy-tale atmosphere.

Pete says, “So can I kiss you now?”

“Please,” manages Patrick.

Patrick’s first kiss with Pete is… It feels like his first kiss ever. It feels like no one has ever kissed Patrick before. It feels like waking up, coming alive, switching on. It feels like a Coltrane lick, a Bowie riff.

Pete draws back, and Patrick blinks his eyes open. Pete’s lips are parted and wet and he’s breathing hard and he says in a rough voice, “Huh. So can I kiss you again?”

“Oh, my God,” Patrick complains, “we’re not going to do this before every single kiss,” and clambers onto Pete, sprawling out on top of him, with zero thought. Like, in a moment before he’d been kissed by Pete Wentz, he might have been self-conscious about just flinging his weight onto him. In this moment, he thinks only that he needs to get closer, and Pete reacts to being tackled by pulling him in, entwining their limbs together, curling his arms around Patrick’s body to slip him into more and more kisses.

“I’m enthusiastic about consent,” Pete mumbles.

“You’ve had my consent for years,” Patrick replies, way more concerned with chasing the taste of Pete, chasing it from his lips to the stubble along his jaw to the spot behind his ear to the base of his neck, licking at sweat, nipping at skin.

“Jesus, Patrick,” Pete gasps, head thrown back against the grass.

“Can I kiss you here?” Patrick asks, sucking an energetic hickey onto Pete’s throat.

“Yeah, sure, can I do this?” Pete responds, and closes his hands on Patrick’s hips so he can grind them up together.

“Oh, fuck,” Patrick gasps, “that is super below the waist, Wentz.”

“Yeah, a bit,” Pete agrees breathlessly. “How far down do you think I can get? All the way to your toes?”

“No, stay right here at my dick,” Patrick says, and finds himself fighting with Pete’s pants. “What the fuck with these fucking jeans, like, these are like some fucking chastity belt or something.” He feels stupid and idiotic that he can’t get them off but they’re, like, at least three sizes too small and the belt is stupidly off to the side and the bulge of Pete’s dick isn’t helping matters and frankly neither is Patrick’s. Patrick experiences a sudden flush of panic, that if Pete says anything about Mikey being good at getting his jeans off, he will freak the fuck out.

But instead Pete says, “I didn’t know I was getting lucky tonight, I would have dressed differently,” and wriggles to help Patrick.

And then, like, there is Pete’s dick. Patrick prior to this hasn’t spent a whole lot of time thinking about other guys’ dicks. And then there is Pete’s, and he think it’s kind of…gorgeous? And is that weird? Like that’s probably a weird thing to think, huh? He probably shouldn’t say, _Pete, you have a beautiful penis_ , that would be weird, right? But it is _beautiful_ and he kind of wants to touch it really badly.

He licks his hand thoughtfully and Pete groans out, “Seriously, Jesus fucking _Christ_ ,” and Patrick thinks, _Here goes nothing_ , and reaches down.

It’s an odd sensation, like trying to play the guitar left-handed. He’s worried that maybe his positioning is all wrong, struggling to figure out how dicks work like he’s never touched one before in his life. He says, “I don’t really know what to do,” and hates admitting that out loud.

Pete pushes his hips up into Patrick’s grip, breath tearing. “I don’t think there’s a trick.”

“Oh,” Patrick says, awkward and joking to try to distract from how self-conscious he feels, “there’s definitely a Trick, I’m right here,” and then thinks he is the most humiliating human being to ever live.

Pete’s eyes fly open to look at him, a laugh punching out of him, and he says, “Fuck, I love you so fucking much,” and reaches a hand out to fist in Patrick’s t-shirt and pull him back down into a clumsy perfect kiss.

Pete kisses him with his mouth and unzips his jeans with his hands, whites out Patrick’s vision with slide of his touch, and it’s been a summer of utmost confusion and for the first time in a very long time, absolutely everything in Patrick’s life makes sense. He’s here for this, and this, and this. That kiss, that groan, that touch, that whisper of his name desperate in his ear, that press of Pete’s fingertips at the back of his neck, urging him into a kiss, twitching through their orgasms.

Afterward, Patrick is a spent and sticky mess on Pete and he’s never been so happy in his entire life and slowly, dimly, he becomes aware of the sounds of the stages still being packed up in the dark distance, and then he says into Pete’s neck, “Oh, fuck, there are people around us.” He means this to sound the proper level of concerned but he’s so sex-sleepy, he sounds more meditative about it. Those people are, like, far away. Well. Maybe not the bodyguard. Oh, well. Hard to care when he’s fucking high as a kite on Pete-ness.

Pete laughs and says, “We didn’t give them much of a show, I think we lasted five minutes.”

“Fuck you, it was enough of a show,” Patrick says good-naturedly. It still doesn’t seem worth the effort to lift his face from the curve of Pete’s neck. No wonder Pete spends so much time with his face pressed against Patrick. _The skin from your shoulder to your ear makes it all worth it_ , thinks Patrick.

“I love you beyond words, Patrick Stump,” Pete says softly, lips pressed against Patrick’s hair.

And Patrick knows what Pete is really saying: how terrifying that is for him, not to have a label, not to have a narrative, to be standing at the heart of the story, the place before the words.

“Good,” Patrick says, and forces himself to lift his head up so Pete knows he means it. “That’s fine. That’s where we can be. Together.”

“Yeah?” Pete says, hopeful, tremulous, unsure.

“Always. Always the two of us. Always,” Patrick promises, firm and determined. He will drum this into head every day, Patrick thinks. With a lot of orgasms, possibly. 

After a somber second, Pete smiles. “The two of us. Totally gay above _and_ below the waist.”

“Yeah,” Patrick says. “If that’s what you want to call it, let’s go with that. Good label.”


End file.
